Unknown Origin
by Imperium Autonomy
Summary: From just another face in the crowd to a hunter so skilled she has become legendary, undoubtedly the best in the Federation. But how does one gain such a coveted title? Following Samus Aran as she fights her way to the top, mission by mission.


Disclaimer: I don't own Metroid, and no amount of wishing otherwise will change that. Sigh.

Note: This story takes place before MZM. Also many thanks to my beta, angelicakes, for making sure there were as few errors as possible before this thing saw the light of day.

_Prologue: From Orphan to Warrior

* * *

_

**Colony K-2L of the Librae-Delta Star System  
****Residential District, 3310 Oak Lane  
****28/03/3483 Galactic Federation Standard Date**

"Aw, come on, Mom," came the whiny voice of a young girl, no more than three years old.

"Yeah, come on, Mom," said the equally whiny but considerably deeper voice of the girl's father. The 'Mom' in question looked between the identical pouting faces of her daughter and husband, and closed her eyes in resignation.

"Alright," she sighed, "but only because I know that your father will keep a close eye on you." As she spoke, she gave her husband a sharp look, clearly saying 'You'd better,' while her daughter cheered. The girl's father simply winked and grinned at his wife, before hoisting his daughter up onto his shoulders and walking out the door, both of them laughing all the while.

* * *

"And finally, we have the storage facility. This is where we keep the refined Auracite before the Federation representatives come to pick it up." The father-daughter duo stood in front of the door of a huge safe, which was built into the wall of a large underground cavern. "We keep it locked up in here because it is very valuable, as well as incredibly explosive."

The young girl 'oohed'; she had highly enjoyed the time she spent with her father as he showed her around the mining facility where he worked. Her father's job as the foreman of the whole facility was really neat, and his mine was the only one on the entire planet that mined Auracite, which was used to fuel spaceships!

Suddenly, a loud clanging noise echoed throughout the cavern, coming from within the safe. A hissing noise soon followed, and a bright orange dot appeared on the door of the safe. The dot moved, leaving behind a trail of glowing, molten metal; someone was cutting through the door from the other side!

"Damn!" the girl's father cursed. Grabbing her hand, he dragged his daughter down the hall to the right of the great safe. Moving quickly, he sat her down inside one of the many small cells that lined the walls of the long hallway. Stepping out of the cell, he placed his hand on a nearly-invisible scanner on the wall and a strong energy field phased into being, glowing a bright green.

"Stay here," the girl's father commanded. The girl nodded, too frightened to do anything else. Not that she had much of a choice; the energy field would prevent any matter at all from passing through it by converting it into pure energy, which in turn would be used to power the shield. Nothing got in or out of these cells unless that field was down, and only the foreman had that authorization.

From down the hall came another loud clanging; whatever was in the safe had finished cutting through. Peering down the hall through the intense glow of the field, the girl could make out a large, scythe-like arm reach through the hole in the safe. It had a metallic sheen to it, reflecting the light of the still-lit blowtorch that was somewhere behind it, still in the safe.

The girl's father, who had padded silently down the hall to the safe, grabbed the arm and yanked the creature through the hole it had created. It landed on the floor with a loud thud and lay there, unmoving.

An inhuman shriek came from within the safe, and another creature leapt out of the hole. As it landed, it turned to the girl's father. The creature opened it's scythe-like claws to reveal thin, metallic cylinders, dropping the blowtorch – still lit – to the floor. Green bolts of plasma shot forth from the metallic cylinders – guns – into the girl's father before he could blink, as the blowtorch hit the ground.

The raw Auracite that lay next to the first creature began to glow a sickly orange as the flame of the blowtorch flickered, then leapt towards the Auracite, causing it to glow a blinding white for a split-second; then a loud bang as the Auracite exploded, quickly followed by a deafening boom. The energy-starved Auracite within the safe had quickly fed upon the energy provided by the small burning bundle just outside the compromised door of the safe. The bright light of the reacting Auracite reached the glowing green energy field of the cell in an instant. The field flickered, and the girl knew only darkness.

* * *

_Pain._

Deep underground in a large chamber, a large slab of partly-melted steel was pushed aside, revealing a young girl no older than three years old. She sat there for a moment, trying to remember just what had happened and how she came to be here. Her father had taken her with him to work that day, and had just finished showing her the incredible underground vault... the vault!

The girl jumped to her feet. Pain shot through her right leg, and she winced. Looking down, she saw that her leg had a long, shallow cut running from the bottom of her knee down to the middle of her shin. She wanted to do nothing more than sit back down and cry until she couldn't cry anymore, but she had to find out what had happened to her father. Using what remained of the wall to hold her up, the girl limped towards the door of the safe room she had been put in. The edges of the open doorway still flickered with a vibrant green energy – the remains of the protective blast shield. Stepping into the darkness of the hallway, she waited for her eyes to adjust.

Nothing was left. Only charred rock and steel remained of the once incredible underground hallway. The vault that had been at the centre of the hallway was now nothing more than a giant, blackened crater. Nothing could have survived the explosion that had caused such destruction. The telltale sounds of footsteps came from far above, and small particles of dust fell from the high ceiling; while the vault may have failed at keeping people out, it seemed it had succeeded in minimalizing any damage caused by the catastrophic explosion.

Realizing that she would be in far more trouble than she already was if she stayed, the girl turned away from the remains of the large vault and ran down the hallway she had just come from. Pain jolted through her leg, but she ignored it; whatever creatures had caused the explosion may have had friends, and they might be the ones she had heard above her. The footsteps faded into silence as she ran. The girl lost track of how far she ran, but the hallway eventually got smaller and began to curve upwards. After what seemed like an eternity, the girl saw a door, marked 'emergency exit only'. Not slowing down in the least, the girl stretched out her arms and shoved the door open. She finally collapsed, breathing in the fresh air as her eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness.

Pausing, the girl took in another breath. Something was... off. _What's that smell? _Her eyes finally cleared, and the girl was started by what she saw. Fires had broken out everywhere; few of the many buildings were still standing at all. The huge air dock that had been the centre of the colony was mostly destroyed. A large pile sat in the remains of the dock; still smouldering, the girl figured that it must be the source of the foul odour, although she was too far away to tell for sure.

A loud screech came from above; looking up, the girl saw some creature flying in the distance. _Wha... a dragon?! But those aren't real!_ The large winged reptile looked like a skeletal pterodactyl, and was approaching the girl at an alarmingly high speed. As it zoomed overhead, the creature locked eyes with the young girl. Cold, lifeless eyes bore into bright blue ones for a moment. Then, the creature turned upwards and flew higher into the sky. The young girl followed it with her eyes and saw that it was speeding towards what appeared to be a huge, metal skyscraper, suspended in mid-air by three large rocket boosters that continuously spouted huge jets of blue-white flame. Many smaller ships flew into the air after the large reptile, eventually docking within the large ship. It hovered in the air a moment longer before shooting off into space with a resounding _clap!_ And the girl was left, for the first time in her life, truly alone; there was nowhere left to go, and no one left she could turn to.

* * *

Three creatures stood, exploring the wreckage that was all that remained of Earth colony K-2L. Three sets of bird-like eyes gazed, the tortured sadness easily visible – not that anyone was left to see. Had anyone remained, they would have marvelled at the appearance of the trio; all were taller than most humans, and all were covered with feathers. Long, thick feathers stuck out from the backs of their arms – the remains of wings that had been long lost lost to evolution. Large, pale yellow beaks protruded from their faces in place of a mouth and nose.

"Such mindless destruction," one spoke. He was both the tallest and the youngest of the group. Clenching his fists, he yelled, "Pirates be damned!"

"Calm yourself, young one," came the raspy voice of another. The shortest of the group, he was clearly incredibly old – he was hunched over, and leaned heavily on the cane he held in his right hand. "Our energy is only wasted on anger," he continued. "We must continue to search for any who may have survived."

"I still believe that our efforts here are wasted," said the third. He was of medium height, but was clearly old, if not so much as the eldest of the group.

"Nevertheless, we will continue the search," said the elder. His voice held a distinct note of authority to it, and the other two began their search anew. "We will meet back here in half an hour," the old one finished. Hearing his companions grunt an affirmative, he started off, mindful of the wreckage around his bird-like feet.

* * *

The old bird-like creature sighed sadly; the half hour he had given for the search was nearly up, and he had failed to find any survivors. Despite his hopes to the contrary, he doubted that his companions had any more luck than he had; the entire colony had been destroyed in the earlier raid. It had been pure chance that the trio had came across the dead colony at all – a need for fuel had brought them from the outer reaches of the solar system – and yet he wished that they had been here to help the people of the colony. Even though he had reprimanded his younger companion earlier, he couldn't help but echo his earlier resentment. _Pirates be damned, _he thought.

Turning the corner of one of the few buildings that remained standing, the old bird's eyes widened in shock; there, sitting by an open doorway, was a young human girl that couldn't be older than three. Other than a wound on her right leg, the girl appeared healthy enough – and, more importantly, alive. Hearing his approach, the girl looked up. Each one gazed into the others eyes for a moment. Reaching out with one of his hands, the old one spoke first. "There's nothing to be afraid of. It's all right now."

The young girl blinked. Then, eyes tearing up, she leapt to her feat and jumped into the old bird, clutching at the cloth of the pale grey robe he was wearing and began bawling her eyes out. Blinking at the suddenness of the action, the old bird wrapped one of his arms around the girl in a tender embrace, keeping is cane in his other hand.

The girl eventually stopped crying enough to get out a stuttered, "Wh-who are you?" in a small voice. The old one thought for a moment; while he spoke Common well enough, his name had sounds that could not be pronounced by most of the beings in the Federation. Making a decision, he said, "You may call me Old Bird. And what is your name, little one?"

Still clutching the robe, the girl looked up into the eyes of Old Bird. Blinking away the remnants of her tears, the girl said, "My name is Samus Aran. P-pleased to meet you."

* * *

**Planet Zebes of the FS-176 Star System  
****Medical Wing  
****05/04/****3483 Galactic Federation Standard Date**

Samus felt odd. There was really no other word that could describe the sensation of floating in a large glass container filled with a somehow breathable liquid. She didn't really give the matter more thought, as she felt strangely calm. It was as if she was somehow separate from the rest of the universe; in her own little world where nothing ever went wrong, where her family was still...

The thought left her as soon as it had come. There was no reason to get worked up in her private world; there was really no reason for anything. There was only the calm sensation of endless floating.

After what seemed like an eternity spent in the calm, she realized that her private world wasn't quite as separate from the rest of the universe as she had thought. If she fought through the calm haze that surrounded her three-year-old mind, she could see a room. She didn't recognize the room, and normally that might have scared her a bit, but she was feeling pretty calm right now so she didn't mind. It helped that she recognized the people – or rather beings – that were in the room. One of them was getting off of what looked like some kind of operating table, while the other - _Old Bird,_ she thought – retrieved a small vial from the side of the table, close to where one of the others arms had been, filled with a thick red substance. The whatever-it-was inside the vial reminded Samus strongly of blood, and that might have made her a bit squeamish, especially after what had happened on K-2L, with the strange creature in the vault and the explosion and the wandering through the tunnels and sweet fresh air and the fires and the dragon and the crying -

But Samus was feeling pretty calm right now, so she didn't worry about it. She noticed how everything in the room was tinted a pretty, pale blue colour. _It must be the stuff I'm floating in, _she thought. She felt her vision become unfocused again as she thought about the pretty colour of the liquid surrounding her, and let her thoughts drift for a while. She felt so calm, so peaceful, that nothing mattered, nothing at all.

Her thoughts stopped in their tracks. Had anyone been looking at her at that moment, they might have noticed the slight, almost imperceptible frown that crept onto Samus' face. _This isn't right,_ she thought dazedly. _I should be feeling at least something, especially after... After what? What should I be feeling again?_ There was something important that she should remember, something that had happened recently, but it was too much trouble to try and think about it through the calm haze. She stopped trying to think, and settled for trying to get her eyes to focus again.

After a few minutes she could see into the room again, in all its pale blue-tinted glory. Looking down, she saw that there were now three of the beings in the room; the two from before had been joined by a third, who was evidently very angry about something. He kept waving his arms about and had an angry look on his face. He appeared to be yelling, although Samus couldn't hear anything through the glass of her container. The angry one seemed to be arguing with Old Bird, who remained the epitome of calm.

After a while, it seemed that even Old Bird had grown tired of the others' ranting. He appeared to shout "Enough!" although Samus wasn't entirely sure. Lip reading was hard at the best of times, let alone when the person whose lips you are trying to read doesn't even have lips. The angry one was silent for a moment, apparently shocked into silence. Using this brief respite to his advantage, Old Bird quickly crossed the room and placed the vial that Samus had seen before somewhere into the base of the structure that held her glass container. He glanced up towards Samus and a look of surprise crossed his face to find her awake, if rather dazed and bleary-eyed. A small smile crossed his features as he looked back down and entered a few commands into the console at the base of her container.

Moments later, the liquid surrounding Samus began to change colour. A reddish haze began to spread through the pale blue liquid from the bottom of the container. Samus watched it rise with the little interest she could muster in her current state. The haze had soon spread throughout the entire liquid, turning it a pale green.

_Shouldn't red and blue make purple? _Samus thought distractedly. _Wait… how do I know that?_ As Samus breathed in the now-green liquid she began to focus, her thoughts becoming clearer than they had ever been. She could feel herself changing; new instincts overriding her old ones, new thoughts entering her head. She could feel herself getting stronger, more intelligent, more agile. Her senses improved, and suddenly she felt as though she could count each of the feathers on each of the creatures in the room. _Not creatures,_ Samus thought,_ Chozo._ She wasn't sure where the thought had come from; it seemed somehow foreign and yet like it had been her own thought at the same time. Words she had never heard before were suddenly shoved into her head, expanding her still infantile vocabulary tenfold. The calm haze that had surrounded her mind had disappeared as though it had never been there in the first place, and she realized that she could now hear bits and pieces of the conversation that was now taking place before her through the thick glass of her container.

"... had no right..."

"... would have died..."

"... she... still..."

"... only wait..."

Somewhere in her mind, Samus realized that these beings – _Chozo_ – were not speaking any language that she had previously known, or even heard of. Even as she realized this she could feel further changes occurring; her throat ached as her vocal chords expanded so that they could imitate the sounds that the Chozo were currently making, her legs and arms felt like they were being stabbed as they extended, making her seem years older than she actually was. Her mind was unable to process all of the different things happening to her at once, and Samus finally drifted into unconsciousness.

* * *

**Planet Zebes of the FS-176 Star System  
****Warrior Training Grounds  
****18/09/****3488 Galactic Federation Standard Date**

The now eight-year old Samus stood in a large, circular chamber deep underneath the surface of Zebes. On the far wall of the chamber stood a suit of armour, glistening in the light that came down through the ceiling from somewhere above.

Viphens stood in the centre of the chamber with a stern expression, the twinkle usually present in his ancient eyes conspicuously absent. Samus wondered why her elderly mentor had brought her down here for. _Old Bird never just comes out and says what he wants,_ she thought. She still hadn't gotten used to referring to him by his given name, despite the fact that he had mentored her since shortly after she had arrived on Zebes. _Old habits die hard,_ she thought with a small smile.

"Samus," Viphens spoke, interrupting her thoughts. "I have trained you well these past years, to the point that you are now able to easily survive the harsh environment of our planet." Samus grinned, remembering the time Viphens had left her in the depths of Brinstar's jungle, calling it a 'training mission'. Needless to say, she had been _quite_ pissed when she had eventually made her way out. She remembered how she had planned to vent days' worth of frustration on him. He had easily defused her anger by simply saying, 'Well done, Samus. I knew you would do me proud.' It had been the first time she had ever heard those words from anyone, and her potent anger had left her as she smiled.

"You have matured far beyond your years not only physically, but mentally as well if the language you've begun to use is any indication," Viphens continued, bringing her back to the present. His expression remained stone like, but his eyes reflected his amusement. Samus snorted.

"I believe that you are now ready for the final gift that we can bestow upon you." As he said this, Viphens moved to the side of the chamber. The armour drifted towards Samus, coming to a halt in the centre of the room. Samus could feel the armour reaching out to her, brushing against her very soul. Viphens continued to speak, but his voice was only a quiet buzzing in Samus' ears compared to the siren song of the suit. She walked towards it, admiring the way the red and orange shone in the light of the room. Dimly she was aware that Viphens had stopped speaking, and was merely looking on with an intrigued look on his face.

Samus reached the suit and stopped, her face reflected in the visor of the helmet. The call of the suit rang loudly in her ears now, enticing her ever closer. Samus raised her arms and placed the palms of her hands on the cool metal surface. She could barely feel the cold touch of the metal on her fingertips over the pounding of the suit's call in her head, driving her forward. With barely a moment's pause, Samus pushed forward.

The song of the armour's call ended abruptly in her head as she passed through the suit as if it were made of only water, shivering slightly at the sensation of being suddenly submerged in an icy, metallic lake. The suit seemed to form around her, moulding itself to her limbs, shaping itself to fit her seamlessly. Samus could feel the suit settle around her, and only then could she appreciate just how heavy the damned thing was. Feeling as though she had gained at least a hundred pounds in the space of a few seconds, Samus collapsed to the ground in an ungainly heap.

Blinking as she adjusted to the light from the ceiling that was now shining directly into her eyes, Samus forced herself to stand. Her muscles screamed in protest as she slowly made her way back to her feet. Looking forward, she could see Viphens standing across from her with a large smile of pride on his face. "Well done, Samus," he said. "The Power Suit has accepted you perfectly. Now you can begin your true training." Samus swore loudly at the thought of the tasks she would have to do now that she was equipped with the mighty weapon. She had already been to hell and back learning the Chozodian art of hand-to-hand combat. It had been especially difficult for her as her body simply wasn't built for the majority of the moves the martial art required. Thanks to her genetic enhancements that allowed her to survive in the harsh Zebesian atmosphere, she had managed to grasp most of them. Eventually.

Samus was so deep in her own thoughts that she had almost missed her mentor's soft chuckle as he said, "By the way, you might want to think about turning it on." As he finished speaking, Samus could feel the suit becoming lighter as energy hummed through her. Within moments the visor came to life with a display of the suit's systems, and the weight of the suit disappeared. She felt a tingle in her right arm, and looked down to find a green cannon materialize over the armour of the suit. _Damn,_ she thought appreciatively. Then she paused as a thought occurred to her. _Wait a minute, all I had to do to avoid that rather _painful_ trip to the ground was simply _think _about _turning it on? Her anger boiled within her as she dismissed the image displayed on her visor with a simple thought, revealing the grinning face of her mentor.

Viphens' face slowly drooped as he saw the wicked grin on Samus' face. He would learn the hard way that one does _not _piss off Samus Aran, especially when she's in possession of her own miniature weapon of mass destruction. He was already moving away from her as the first words since they had arrived in the chamber came out of her mouth.

"Oh, it's _on_."

* * *

**Planet Zebes of the FS-176 Star System  
****Undisclosed Location  
****16/07/3494 Galactic Federation Standard Date**

"Again," said a voice from somewhere above Samus' head. She groaned, her muscles screaming in protest as she pushed herself to her feet.

"What the hell is the point of this damned exercise anyway?" She spat angrily. "The suit's automated targeting system takes care of most of the work for me; all I have to do is point the damned cannon in the right direction and fire."

"The suit augments your natural abilities," came the practised answer. The light staccato tapping of a cane against the hard ground accompanied the footsteps of Viphens, her elderly teacher. It seemed that he had made it his personal mission in life to "teach" (see: torture) her everything he knew since he had first rescued her from her demolished home years ago. "If you lack the natural abilities -"

"Then the suit will only weigh me down, I know," Samus finished irritably. It was a phrase that she had long since memorized, having had it repeated to her many times daily since shortly after she had arrived on Zebes. She knew that there was truth in the words, but that didn't mean that she liked having to train for hours in the heavy armor of her Power Suit. Worse, she was only allowed to have it partially activated; no guidance systems, no targeting systems, no enhanced manoeuvrability. At the moment, her suit was only a few dozen kilograms of dead weight. The only thing that was fully functional was the cannon that took the place of half her right arm, which enabled her to participate in the target practise that was the cause of her current... situation.

"Then perhaps you should spend less time questioning what you already know, and more time taking care of the target that is currently speeding towards your head," Viphens spoke calmly. Samus cursed, fighting against the dead weight of the suit as she turned slowly towards the small metal orb hurtling towards her from the right. She lifted her arm, the gravity working against her, and fired.

The shot flew wildly to the side, missing the orb by a wide margin. She fired again.

Another miss. Samus cursed under her breath and fired again. This time she knew that she would hit, could _feel _the sphere of energy as it left the tip of the cannon and hurtled towards the small orb. She waited with baited breath...

And the orb danced to the right, the shot missing by mere inches, and continued speeding through the air until it made contact with the side of Samus' head. As she lay on the ground in a daze, she could have sworn she saw a small smile on Viphens' old face. _Vindictive old bastard,_ she thought.

* * *

**Interstellar Space, Hyperspeed Travel  
****Destination Unknown  
****20/12/3497 Galactic Federation Standard Date**

Faster-than-light travel is an interesting thing. Most people are under the impression that, when one accelerates to beyond the speed of light, it is as if all the stars in the visibly sky are suddenly stretched out into beams of light, flying past you as you fly through the depths of space. Then again, most people never got to see just what it looked like when hyper-drive kicked in. This is because most people need to go into cryosleep prior to going into hyper-drive, unless they wanted their brains to melt and drip out of their ears – or whatever passed for ears for that particular species. Or a brain, for that matter.

Samus Aran was not most people.

Looking out into the void was actually quite dull, she mused. The deep, impenetrable black of the half-dimension created by faster-than-light travel – by ripping a hole in the fabric of space and time itself, going through, and simply popping out at some other point in the universe – was an almost unbelievably boring thing for such a highly complex mechanism. The physics behind it was certainly interesting enough. The Pneumann drives responsible for the "hyper-drive" of every starship in existence worked on the same basic, if far-fetched, principle: energy has no mass. One could convert energy _into _mass, and vice-versa, but energy itself has no mass. From there, simple application of Newton's second law, which said that the net force of an object equals said object's mass times it's acceleration, could shoot an object from point a to point b without much of a fuss.

The reason why people needed to go into cryosleep prior to going into hyper-drive was that there was a smaller Pneumann drive within each cryosleep chamber, preventing the occupant from being converted into energy itself. The reason for this being that while disassembling and reassembling inorganic material was a simple enough process, doing the same to organic tissue was a good deal more complex. In fact, the ship that leaves hyperspace is always subtly different on an atomic level from the one that went in.

The only reason that Samus was currently standing – very much awake, mind you – looking out into the black was that her Power Suit was equipped with its own Pneumann drive, or something very similar to it. It was this device that allowed her to change her physical shape at a whim, packing her into a tight sphere. Modern-day physics told her that not only was such a transformation impossible, but also that a Pneumann drive was most certainly _not _going to fit anywhere in or on a mobile Powered Suit that Federation scientists were capable of engineering.

She grinned.

Then she remembered the fact that she had left her home (forcefully ejected was probably a better term) so quickly that she had only been able to take her suit as it was currently equipped, which meant that she didn't have any of the extra features that she knew her suit was capable of, and the grin quickly left her face. Not that she was left helpless; even the most basic version of the suit made her a personified version of an unstoppable walking tank, _cannon-for-an-arm_ and all.

However it was not her lack of all the "bells and whistles" that left her with such a sombre expression, but rather the circumstances in which she had left the planet she called home, and the mentor she had thought of as family. Staring out into the endless black void, she thought; the images of only hours earlier flashing before her eyes.

* * *

_Another explosion rocked the complex; this one sounded much closer than the others had before it. A stocky, elderly bird-like creature – a Chozo – ran down the corridor, a young girl clutched in the sharp grip of his talons. She stumbled, struggling to keep up with the quick pace set by her companion. She failed to hide her look of surprise at the energy he suddenly seemed to have in spades; _he doesn't even have his cane, for fuck sakes,_ she thought._

_They turned another corner; they had gone through so many of these hidden tunnels that she had long ago lost track of where in the hell it was that they were, but her companion continued on without a second thought. It seemed, however, that their journey had come to an end; the corridor came to a rather abrupt halt up ahead. They reached the end of the corridor, where they finally stopped; Samus paused to catch her breath, but it seemed her companion had no need for this._ He's much more able-bodied than he ever let on,_ she thought distractedly._

"_Samus," he spoke as he turned to her, "I'm afraid that we don't have much time."_

"_What the hell are you-" Samus began sharply, but was interrupted by another explosion. Her companion raised an eyebrow at her language, an expression she hadn't seen on him in a long time, but continued on regardless._

"_It would appear that our ancestral home is no longer safe for you, my dear," he said, concern present in his usually cheerful tone. "Even now, they come ever closer. Few though they may now be in number, they remain as vicious as ever, and will not hesitate to end your life should they discover you here."_

"_Just what are you going on about, old bird?" Samus asked, her childhood moniker for her companion slipping out in a decidedly derogatory manner as her mind put the pieces together and came to the only possible conclusion that would explain what was going on. A cold feeling spread through the pit of her stomach._

"_You know of whom I speak," he replied quietly._

"_Pirates," Samus breathed. Her face became expressionless, unable to convey the mass of emotions that flew through her mind; fear, confusion, rage, and even some anticipation. A spark of eagerness came to her eyes. "Finally," she said, "this is what I've been training for. This ends tonight."_

"_No," the ancient Chozo spoke quietly. Shock flew across Samus' face, but he continued before she could speak. "You have the will of a warrior within you, but you are not yet prepared to face their ruthlessness." He looked as though he had more to say, and she certainly wasn't about to leave this conversation there, but they were both cut off by a sound that chilled them both to the bone; a loud screech, quickly followed by the sound of many footsteps echoing don the corridors through which they had just came. The pirates would be upon them in moments._

_Before Samus could react, her companion gave her a hard shove that sent her sprawling towards the wall. Instead of the sharp, painful impact she had been expecting, she merely passed through the wall as if it wasn't there. _A hologram,_ she thought distractedly; there was a brief moment of darkness as she passed through the image, and then came face to face with herself, reflected in the visor of her now-familiar power suit. This too she passed through, feeling the cold metal shift to allow her into the suit. Her vision blurred for a moment as the suit reshaped itself around her, and she had the familiar feeling of being submerged in an icy, metallic lake. _

_Her vision reset itself, and she saw the old Chozo through the conjured image of the hologram wall. She felt the suit settle around her, and briefly realized that the one thing the suit could not determine from the confused jumble of thoughts that was currently her mind was a clear command to _turn on. _Feeling the full weight of the suit, she went crashing to the ground of the small, dark tube that she had been pushed into. Managing to look up, she saw something that she would never forget; her companion was turning to look back down the hallway, but was too slow. A Pirate stood at the opposite end of the corridor, grotesque metallic arm outstretched in a way that Samus knew was always a precursor to death. Then, a loud _clap! _as a metal door slid shut, blocking her view of the scene. She heard a loud screech from the Pirate that was quickly overpowered by the low rumbling of a powerful engine, then heard a sound that sounded like hundreds of explosions going off at once before she felt herself accelerating quickly as the tube – _escape pod, _she thought – shot out from beneath the surface of the planet, heading deep into space at a blinding speed before fading from existence, becoming impossible to track.

* * *

_

Samus shook her head, clearing the vision from her eyes. As the adrenaline that had been pounding through her veins faded, she suddenly felt numb. Dimly she realized that she was probably going into shock; she made her way towards the back of the pod, the hazy colours of the metal panels that decorated the interior now appearing somehow muted to her. She stumbled to the small cryosleep chamber that took up the back of the pod, feeling her suit seemingly melt off her skin as she transitioned from the protections of the suit to those of the blissful unawareness of suspended animation. Before she lost consciousness, she prayed to whichever higher power that she didn't believe in for a dreamless sleep._

* * *

_

**Author's Notes:** Just a few things I'd like to address in order to answer any questions that might come up.

Firstly, not every chapter in this story will jump through time like this one does, with flashbacks being the obvious exception.

For those who may have noticed, I did borrow the method of indicating the location and time a particular scene occurs in from _See You Next Mission_, which is a fantastic story that you should go read if you haven't already.

Finally, my muse is a fickle little bitch, which means any future updates could be rather sporadic. I'll keep you updated.

Anyway, that's about all I have to say. Thanks for reading!


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